Facilitation, Systems, and Users: The Complete Socio-Technical System

This paper examines the facilitator, group member, and system roles as a complete socio-technical system. Each of these three components of the sociotechnical system is discussed in terms of the roles that they play within the context of the group meeting. This research draws from previous work on "group roles" to define how these "roles" interact to accomplish effective group per formance. The development of a concept called the "co-facilitator", being composed of both human and information technology components, is established as a perspective for future system development. Finally, the design of a study in progress is discussed, the intent of which is to explore the roles that each component of the socio-technical system play within the context of longitudinal work groups. 1. What is facilitation.? Group Support Systems (GSS) are one use of electronic organizational communication which truly link technology and participants into a socio-technical system (28,34], where technologies and people interact in a complex set of actions and reactions. In a GSS, users and facilitators interact through and with computerized information and communication system to do collaborative work. Research on GSS and their impact on group processes continues to grow. [4,21,29] Group outcomes such as project time and group member satisfaction (26,271, idea generation ability [9,20], and group process [371 all have been shown to improve when collaborative technology is used to support a group's activities. However, other studies have demonstrated contrasting findings regarding the outcomes of GSS use [15,35]. One variable which may account for some of these differences is the presence of a facilitator [11,22,26,35), and the roles which the facilitator assumes relative to the group. 1060-3426/94 $3.00